Lessons in Sex Appeal From Carine Roitfeld

Not to be outdone by Anna Wintour's 60 Minutes treatment, her French counterpart, Carine Roitfeld, had London's Guardian over to her office for a chat. The reporter was positively fixated on how sexy the 54-year-old French Vogue editor is. Witness:

Listening to Carine Roitfeld talk is like having Chanel No 5 eau de parfum dripped, very slowly, into your ear. If it were possible to bottle that accent, it would surely be found to contain the very DNA of sexy-French-womanliness. Her thickly Gallic delivery is cartoonishly seductive, but the kittenishness is spiked by the low, Gauloise huskiness of her timbre. The combination is a heady cocktail of sharp and sweet, like the salted rim of a Margarita.

So enamored with Carine's sex appeal was this reporter, she doesn't even get to clearing up the rumors about Carine knocking Anna Wintour from her throne at American Vogue for another several hundred words.

Carine said:

"I was never, ever approached to go to America. And to be honest, if they approached me, I think it's really not me. I'm good at what I do here and I'm not sure if you put me in that world I would be as good. I think it's much easier to talk to 100,000 women than millions of women across America."

She added:

"I don't know what I will do next," muses Roitfeld artlessly, "but I cannot do the same for the next 10 years. I love to change. I have been here eight years; I think maybe 10 years is good. But for now, I am very happy in my little Paris."

But who cares that she may only have a short two years left at French Vogue when the kittenishness of her voice is spiked by the low, Gauloise huskiness of her timbre? And so, from this piece, we have compiled Lessons in Sex Appeal, by Carine Roitfeld.

1. Don't work too hard when you're young.

"It's like when you squeeze a lemon too hard, you run out of juice. Me, I have plenty of juice."

2. If you have figure flaws, move around a lot so people don't notice them.

"If you don't have perfect ankles, still you can move your legs in a certain way and look very sexy."

"Me, I don't smoke. Smoking can be a beautiful gesture for a picture. But it's easy — it's too easy — to make a beautiful picture with a beautiful girl smoking a cigarette. And what is the picture saying, when you have a beautiful girl and she has a beautiful outfit and a beautiful handbag, and a cigarette? No. We have to find a new gesture, I think. Because smoking, it is not good for you. Or for your teeth."

5. Take your clothes off.

"I like to have something every month that is — how you say? — not politically correct. A little bit at the limit. Sex, nudity, a bit rock 'n' roll, a sense of humour. That is very French Vogue."

6. Draw style inspiration from ugly outfits you see in airports.

"Sometimes, when you go to airport and look at the people, you see the worst looks — but the worst looks can give you more ideas than the best looks."

7. Above all else, please the young people.

"When you get older, you have to stay a bit rock 'n' roll so that young people will still be interested in you. The way you move, the way you talk, maybe the way you have your hair in your face a little bit — this keeps you interesting."